Coriolanus (Botanics 2016)

___________________________________________________________

JOYCE MCMILLAN on CORIOLANUS at the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, for The Scotsman 27.6.16.
____________________________________________________________

5 stars *****

THE PEOPLE have voted, and the ruling elites are aghast at what they have done. The people demand not only relief from hunger, but the immediate punishment of arrogant rulers who have scorned their opinions for too long; including one who dismisses their views as “the yea or no of general ignorance”, and demands that the Senate ignore or reverse their decisions.

This is the high political drama that plays out in Shakespeare’s mighty 1609 tragedy Coriolanus; and it’s perhaps not surprising that the atmosphere in the Kibble Palace was electric, on Friday night, as the audience began to feel just how powerfully Shakespeare – apparently still a living playwright, 400 years on – had imagined, understood and dramatised exactly the kind of clash between elite opinion and ordinary voters that is shaking the British state this weekend.

In normal times, the main talking-point in director Gordon Barr’s spare, intense and unforgettable two-hour version might have been the fact that the great general Coriolanus is here a woman, played with breathtaking skill and passion by the magnificent Nicole Cooper. This weekend, though, the question of gender is simply overwhelmed by a tide of mighty poetry about statecraft and its perils that could hardly be more timely and absorbing if it had been written yesterday. Janette Foggo is superb as Coriolanus’s lion-hearted mother Volumnia, Alan J. Mirren full of warrior glamour as her great enemy Aufidius. And will the state “cleave at the midst and perish”, as Shakespeare’s desperate senators fear? Perhaps; but in the meantime, here is a piece of theatre worthy of the historic moment in which we find ourselves, and one that demands to be seen.

Until 9 July.